World Christianity

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

World Christianity or global Christianity has been defined both as a term that attempts to convey the global nature of the

global South', in Asia, Africa, and Latin America."[5] It also includes Indigenous or diasporic forms of Christianity in the Caribbean,[6] South America,[6] Western Europe,[7] and North America.[7]

History of the term

denominations within Protestantism fueled much of the global growth of Christianity in Latin America, the Caribbean, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa.[2][3][6][8][9]

The term world Christianity can first be found in the writings of Francis John McConnell in 1929 and Henry P. Van Dusen in 1947.[10][11] Van Dusen was also instrumental in establishing the Henry W. Luce Visiting Professorship in World Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in 1945, with Francis C. M. Wei invited as its first incumbent.[12] The term would likewise be used by the American historian and Baptist missionary Kenneth Scott Latourette, Professor of the History of Christianity at Yale Divinity School, to speak of the "World Christian Fellowship" and "World Christian Community".[13][14] For these individuals, world Christianity was meant to promote the idea of Christian missions and ecumenical unity. However, after the end of World War II, as Christian missions ended in many countries, such as North Korea and China, and parts of Asia and Africa shifted due to decolonization and national independence, these aspects of world Christianity were largely lost.[15]

The current usage of the term puts much less emphasis in

Global South and Third World countries.[2][3][8][9][16] Hence, world Christianity has more recently been used to describe the diversity and the multiplicity of Christianity across its two-thousand-year history.[15]

Another term that is often used as analogous to world Christianity is the term global Christianity. However, scholars such as Lamin Sanneh have argued that global Christianity refers to a Eurocentric understanding of Christianity that emphasizes the replication of Christian forms and patterns in Europe, whereas world Christianity refers to the multiplicity of Indigenous responses to the Christian gospel.[17] Philip Jenkins and Graham Joseph Hill contend that Sanneh's distinction between world Christianity and global Christianity is artificial and unnecessary.[18][19]

Notable figures

Andrew Walls, a key pioneer in the field of World Christianity

Some notable figures in the academic study of world Christianity include Andrew Walls,[20] Lamin Sanneh,[21] and Brian Stanley,[22] all three of whom are associated with the "Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity".[23] More recently, Klaus Koschorke and the “Munich School” of World Christianity has been highlighted for its contribution in understanding the polycentric nature of world Christianity.[24]

In contrast to these historians, there is a growing number of theologians who have been engaging the field of world Christianity from the discipline of systematic theology, ecclesiology, and missiology. Some examples of this include the Pentecostal Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Catholic Peter C. Phan, and the Baptist Graham Joseph Hill.[25][26][27][28]

See also

References

  1. S2CID 234580589
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  2. ^
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  3. ^
    S2CID 152096915. Archived
    (PDF) from the original on 30 January 2022. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
  4. ^ Bonk, Jonathan J. (20 December 2014). "Why "World" Christianity?". Boston: The Center for Global Christianity and Mission at the Boston University School of Theology. Archived from the original on 20 December 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
  5. S2CID 152998021
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  6. ^
    JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctv2mzb0p5
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  7. ^
    OCLC 221663356
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  8. ^
    LCCN 2007046731
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  9. ^
    S2CID 145722188
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  10. OCLC 893126
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  11. OCLC 823535
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  12. ISBN 978-1-60833-021-8
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  13. OCLC 1149344
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  14. OCLC 396146
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  15. ^
    S2CID 170971032
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  16. ISBN 978-1-60833-106-2
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  17. ISBN 978-0-8028-2164-5
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  18. OCLC 922799591
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  19. OCLC 71004136
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  20. ^ Burrows, William R.; Gornik, Mark R.; McLean, Janice A., eds. (2011). Understanding World Christianity: The Vision and Work of Andrew F. Walls. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
  21. ^ Akinade, Akintunde E., ed. (2010). A New Day: Essays on World Christianity in Honor of Lamin Sanneh. New York: Peter Lang.
  22. ^ "Professor Brian Stanley". School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  23. ^ "Yale-Edinburgh Group". Yale Divinity Library. Retrieved 27 July 2016.
  24. JSTOR 10.5325/jworlchri.6.1.0004
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  25. ISBN 9780227904350
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  26. JSTOR 10.5325/jworlchri.1.1.0027
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  27. ISBN 978-0-8308-4085-4
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  28. ISBN 9781532603259
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Further reading
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